Big Business

I'm semi retired now, hence the time to waste on blogs nobody will ever read.  Just had an invite to go back up to the big smoke for a drink with various ex colleagues - both working, retired and redundant from the major bank I used to work for.  The team I was a member of originally had 14 members; it's now down to one worker and one manager and is still expected to do the same work.
The last retirement/redundancy do I went to, there was the guy taking early retirement, 7 ex staff members and just one guy who still had a job standing around with pints.  The ratio did improve as the lunchtime went on.

This all brought back my absolute astonishment at the apparent inefficiencies of large organisations.  The number of people actually doing any work is small compared to the number of lower, middle and higher managers all spending their expensive time holding meetings.
Not only do they not do much management of their staff, but they all seem to be trying to advance their own agenda rather than pulling for the benefit of the organisation.  Empire building is rife.  In my experience the highest management set direction, middle management bicker about distribution of responsibility and resources, and the workers get it done by talking directly to each other at the working level - despite the managers interference.
It does seem that once any organisation - business, government or charity - expands beyond a certain size, managers lose sight of the aims of the organisation and instead feather their own nests.  I've worked for small companies and there's a realisation that not doing the required job can directly lead to the company going bust and everyone losing their jobs.  The top management of a small organisation also see directly what's happened, and don't rely on data which has been favourably filtered as it passes through each layer of a large organisations management.
I've worked at project manager level - my projects came in on time and within budget.  My last major project came in with zero defects.  Why?  I always thought of my job as manager as facilitating the work of the guys actually doing the job.  Let them do their work, don't put silly obstructions in their way.  If they tell you there is a problem, they need praise for letting you know so you can deal with it, not a roasting for admitting everything's not perfect.  At the end of the day, the vast majority of staff want to do a good job for their own satisfaction - any who don't need sacking!

On a related note - Staff Motivation Days.
Where I worked these things were so unpopular they had to be made compulsory.
It kind of works this way - High management wants more efficiency from the staff.  Middle management blame the attitudes of the working staff who just want to get the job done, not to promote their immediate mangers selfish interests.  How to turn this round?  Get the staff more motivated and engaged with the companies(? managers?) aims!!  Bring in the experts, spend some money, tick the boxes!!
So the staff are dragged away from their backlog of work to be preached at for  a half or whole day.
The preachers do seem to be pretty stupid and unaware what's going on in the company elsewhere.  One of the messages is that the bank wants only the very best staff - then when pay is mentioned it's market matching, i.e. you'll only get exactly industry average pay despite being 'the best'.  Another one is that you must be engaged with the company and be passionate, really care, about your job.  Which contrasts nicely with how much they care about staff when the latest round of redundancies is announced.  Another nicety of the whole process is that every member of staff must complete the exercises, questionnaires etc to gain maximum benefit from the session - unless of course you're a high enough manager when the absolute rules clearly don't apply to you - it's enough to grace the session with your presence for a couple of hours.
One year the annual appraisal had plenty of categories for 'engagement with company values'; 'team participation'; 'contributing to meetings'; ' passionate working':   BUT nowhere to actually say whether you could do your job or not.
Managers were so 'busy' at meetings they bottled out of doing their real jobs.  Initially we all had to suggest a number of people from outside the department we'd dealt with and would provide feedback - first year we provided a list from which the manager selected and obtained the feedback.  A couple of years later we selected our own feedback providers and also had to get the feedback from them and put it into an easily digestible form for the manager.  Not that it made a blind bit of difference as a normal distribution curve meant it was practically impossible to get anything outside an average rating.  If the manager wanted to give their pet sheep employee a high grade, they also had to identify a sacrificial goat to keep the bell curve a nice shape.
And why are you not allowed to discuss salaries?  Maybe because the managers aren't confident they're being fair?

I'm out of it now.   I earn a quarter of what I used to, don't have to commute, and for once in my life I'm content, if not yet actually happy.  For the first time in my life I get genuine thanks for doing my current casual employment.  Real thanks feel good, unlike the corporate 'thanks' from a harassed manager (another box ticked), or the (sometimes financially generous) official thank you schemes.

And didn't the stress levels rise as I remembered my time as a corporate cog.